ABSTRACT
Does attending to one’s own personal spiritual needs make people more likely to shirk their moral responsibilities? One worry is that one’s spiritual practices, such as prayer, confession, reading Scripture, and attending religious services, might make them susceptible to moral licensing—the psychological phenomenon of one’s initial good behavior leading them to subsequently engage in bad behavior. If one’s spiritual practices make them feel like a saint, will they be tempted to cash in their spiritual saint credit for moral leniency? Upon examining the empirical literature on religion and moral behavior, I argue that the evidence does not give us sufficient reason to think that engaging in spiritual practices makes people more susceptible to moral licensing in general. Whether engaging in spiritual practices leads to moral licensing depends on a number of factors related to how one engages in spiritual practices and how they view this engagement, such as one’s view of God, the extent to which they identify with the behaviors, and the nature of the beliefs that are made salient by their spiritual practices. In the final section, I offer two practical strategies for avoiding the types of conditions that can make people more susceptible to moral licensing.
